


it's beginning to look a lot like-

by domeric_bolton



Series: apartmentgate [2]
Category: Young Avengers
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 20:18:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2705333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domeric_bolton/pseuds/domeric_bolton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's America's first Christmas on Earth with friends. It's going to be a really fucking great holiday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's beginning to look a lot like-

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to the lesbian holiday installment of apartmentgate. this is also unbetaed so holla at yo boy if i make a mistake somewhere.
> 
> also all i know about radio dj'ing is that you have to have a weird dj name and i learned that from a sarah dessen novel so please correct me if i fucked up

So Noh-varr got the DJ job on one of those underground radio channels for Christmas. The station plays the same retro rock crap (well, maybe it isn't all crap- America does like most of the songs that the other DJs play) that Noh-varr adores in his dumb naive alien way, so they basically had to hire him. This means that unless they need him for a mission, the Young Avengers don't see much of Marvel Boy.

It's early December, a few weeks after a reasonably peaceful Thanksgiving at Billy's house. They had crashed Billy's house because he's the only one with actual alive, loving parents, but the Kaplans are too goddamn nice to throw out a bunch of Young Avengers. America could have had less of Loki's yammering or Teddy and Billy's obsession with feeding each other, but it was nice. She didn't tell anyone at the table that this was her first Thanksgiving in a house instead of on the streets.

It's been a big year for America, and it isn't even over yet. She's celebrated everyone's birthdays, and tried to forget Billy and Tommy's joint party. She's done Easter with David and all the Jewish fasting days with the Maximoffs and even a Kree solstice ritual with Noh-varr, which was confusing and full of nudity. 

Independence Day is still her favorite holiday. America doesn't know when she was born- her planet never made a big deal about birth dates- so Kate had bought her a shirt with an American flag on it and declared that today could be her birthday. It had been great.

Right now, the Young Avengers (minus Noh-varr) are huddled inside Tommy, Loki, Noh-Varr, and David's room, shivering because the heating in their shitty apartment is sporadic and liable to switch off randomly. Tommy is whining that he's cold and that he needs to snuggle with David, who is quietly laughing and pushing him off. America rolls her eyes.

Kate pokes her in the side, and America yelps. "Too much boy kissing, princess?"

Kate has a really distracting smile.

"Quit stealing my lines," responds America coolly, but smiles back at her. "And I'm not the princess."

"Riiiight. You're the Arya Stark who runs away from her-" Kate waves her hands around because she's a little bit drunk- "her tragic backstory and becomes a scary cool warrior, right?"

America still hasn't read Game of Thrones, which Billy and Teddy treat as a cardinal sin, but Kate talks so much about the damn shows that America can understand what a compliment being compared to Kate's second favorite character. 

She feels herself grinning, and covers her mouth with another drink. (No one trusts Loki to make drinks after the gin incident last summer, so David has become both their bartender and designated driver. It's just impossible not to love David when he's scowling with tequila in one hand.)

"Hey, hey, shush," Teddy is yelling, and then the radio is blasting Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas" at full volume. America claps her hands over her ears until Teddy cackles and turns it down. 

"This is still the best Christmas song ever and no one can convince me otherwise," opines Kate, and Billy nods sagely. "The time they sang it in Love Actually?"

" _Yes_ ," yells Billy, eyes bright with tequila and Christmas lights.

Teddy giggles and nudges his boyfriend's side. "I've made him watch every Christmas movie I have and he loves them all," he confides to no one in particular. Everyone appears to be at least a little bit drunk.

"There aren't any good Hanukkah movies?" asks Loki innocently, who is fiddling with the radio and drinking tequila out of the bottle with a curly straw. He never fails to amaze America with how much of a "hot mess" (Kate's words) he can be.

"Have you ever heard of any?" 

The music abruptly switches, and the end of an old Joan Jett song replaces Mariah's sugary sweet vocals. Everyone whines out in complaint until Loki yells for quiet and the DJ's voice pours out of the radio's tinny speakers.

"Hey there, New York, how's the weather?" says the DJ smoothly.

"That's Noh-Varr, holy shit," says David.

America feels funny in her stomach, like the time she ate three helpings of canned corn at that Chicago food shelter and vomited yellow in a dumpster. She looks for Kate's reaction.

Because, see, the whole thing between Kate and America at the New Year's party was... weird. For some reason, America had thought that Kate would just magically admit, "That's right! I'm always looking at you because I do like girls, but I love you!" 

Which is fucking pathetic.

And then America had thought, okay, maybe Kate needed time. And then she thought that maybe Kate didn't like her at all. And then she realized that humans don't interpret "you're not that straight" as a declaration of love. (Which is isn't, back on America's old planet. But still.)

America can jump feet first into a totally unknown dimension, or punch a killer robot in the face, or kick-punt an alien into a volcano. She's done all of those things before. She just can't tell a girl that she loves her.

Which is fucking pathetic.

"I'm If You Want to be Awesome, and you're listening to Channel ADZ14. Here's a song for you on this cold night." 

"If you want to be awesome?" repeats Kate, and giggles. "That's his DJ name? God, what a nerd."

America makes the mistake of looking at Loki. He is staring at her, and then Kate, with a mixed look of amusement and pity. Fuck you, she mouths at him, and pushes herself off the floor and into the hallway.

Why the fuck does everything have to center around Kate? Why can't America just focus on completing the Young Avengers' missions and nothing else?

She likes these people. She loves the other Young Avengers, really. She's just never really been able to feel like they love her back. Maybe it's the alien thing. Maybe it's because she wasn't part of the original group with Kate and Teddy and Billy and Tommy.

America leans against the hallway's peeling paint and presses her hands against her face. She is Miss America. She will not cry. She will-

It is late November, the first year of America's new life almost completed, and she is crying alone in a shitty apartment over a girl.

And then to make matters shittier, America opens her eyes and Kate is there.

"Fuck," mumbles America, and scrubs at her eyes resentfully.

"Are you okay?" Kate says softly, shifting from one foot to another. She looks pitying and nervous, an odd combination. It's the only time she's seen America cry.

America glares at Kate through wet eyes. Kate's so pretty. So pretty and tough and strong, like a whip. America is totally head-over-heels wrecked for this girl.

"Sorry," America exhales. It would be for the best if Kate left now, and let America cry it out and catch her breath, and come back inside and pretend nothing happened. She can hear the faint sounds of laughter and Christmas music from inside.

"Do you-" Kate has to look up to make eye contact with America; she's an inch shorter than America in boots. "Are you mad at me?"

"Do you like me?" America replies, which is literally the dumbest thing she could have said in that moment. Maybe she's catching Tommy's foot-in-mouth disease. "Dios. Sorry. That was-"

"Do I like you?" exclaims Kate. "America..."

"Just forget I said anything, okay-"

"Of course I do!" Kate looks almost baffled that America would suggest something like that, but not in the way America expected her to. "God, America, you're my girlfriend. Right?" She looks fearful. "Oh my god, please tell me I haven't fucked up again."

As Tommy would say, holy jesus fucking shit.

"We- I mean-"

"I thought when you kissed me after the New Year's party-"

"You didn't say anything, I just assumed-"

"Yeah, but you were always flirting with me and-"

"I thought you were still with Noh-Varr, or god forbid Tommy-"

"America, you kissed me-"

Somehow they end up laughing. The kind of laughing that makes America's sides hurt, which is the best kind of laughter, especially if you do it when tipsy with your girlfriend. This is the strangest situation that America has ever been in, unknowingly dating the girl that she thought didn't like her for over a year, but she's laughing, so fuck everything. She can chalk it up the prudishness around kissing to some weird human custom, because her and Kate Bishop. Holy shit.

The door to Tommy and David's room swings open, and Loki pokes his head out to yell, "What's going on out here?" 

America covers her grin with a hand.

"Someone's getting busyyy," croons Tommy. The Young Avengers, it appears, have gathered in the hallway to embarrass Kate and America.

"Go futz yourself," shouts Kate, and slips her hand into America's.

"Very sneaky, princess."

Someone adds "wear protection," and then Teddy asks if girls can wear protection, and then David starts lecturing in the middle of the hallway about dental dams until the other Young Avengers yell at him to shut up and retreat back into the room, leaving Kate and America alone in the hall.

"Boys," America says, slightly out of breath.

"Boys," agrees Kate emphatically.

They stand there, smiling at each other like idiots for a moment.

"Oh look, mistletoe," says Loki, who has appeared out of nowhere.

"Hey!"

"I'm gone, I'm gone."

There is, in fact, mistletoe hanging from above America's head.

Maybe there are some perks to being friends with a god of mischief.

"That wasn't there before," Kate says, pretend-curiously, and America leans in and kisses her.

It's really nice, kissing Kate. It makes America's legs feel weightless and shaky, and her neck starts to hurt a little because of Kate's one missing inch, but it's really nice. It isn't their first kiss- there was New Year's, and Independence Day, and that time that Kate almost died in LA- but it's America's first time kissing her girlfriend. It's the first time it means something to both of them.

Kate pulls away and smiles, her eyes heavy lidded. "All I want for Christmas is you," she says in a sweet voice.

"Quit stealing lines from Love Actually, princess."

"Wait, you've seen that movie? God damn it!"

"Everyone has." She had watched it in a Los Angelos shelter in the middle of July because it was the only movie that had been donated, but America decides against telling Kate that. 

"Noh-varr hasn't."

"Noh-varr's an alien. Also, you should stop talking about your ex, because I'm going to kiss you again."

"Okay, wow, but you're an alien! Argument invalid!"

America kisses her again.

It's her first Christmas on Earth with friends. It's going to be a really fucking great holiday.


End file.
